Florida: Day 4

This morning we got up and drove ourselves over to the Waffle House for a fabulously greasy breakfast. We somehow got confused thinking that they carried chocolate chip pancakes, but in fact, we were looking for chocolate chip waffles. Yes, hence the name, Waffle House. And their grits were good. And so were the hashbrowns. And yes, I ate my weight in cholesterol, but it's vacation, so it doesn't count.

After we filled up, we made our way to the other side of Key West for a look at the local attractions. I decided that even though I dislike Ernest Hemingway's sexist third-grader writing style, that I should at least go see his house, especially since everyone else considers him to be a legend of American literature. (What I really wanted to see was the six-toed cats). We didn't have far to walk, but we did get a little shock when we were charged $12 a person to get in. To see a house. Belonging to a dead guy. Wait...this seems familiar... Oh, right. Graceland is the same way.

The cats were immediately obvious, as there are apparently around fifty of them wandering the rather small property. They have the run of the house, including sleeping on the beds and the furniture that no one else is allowed to touch. The house itself is pretty typical of Florida, open and breezy, lots of windows, and a beautiful garden. It's actually much larger than it looks from the front, as we found out when we wandered through the backyard to find a pool. There were pictures hanging all throughout the house, many of people I had never heard of, but probably should have if I was a proper devotee of modern American literature. But I'm not. 'Cause Hemingway sucks. Hey, at least I got a picture of the room where the "magic" happened.

After we left the Hemingway house, we walked down the street to the Butterfly Conservatory. Once again we paid an outrageous sum for admission, but this time it was at least to see something cool. We walked into their climate controlled butterfly sanctuary and were immediately surrounded by dozens of flittering butterflies. They landed everywhere, on the pathways, on the feeding dishes, on flowers, on branches. And they were stunning in every color imaginable.

As we were walking the pathway, all of sudden we noticed something scuttle by in the shadows of the plants. It was too small to be an animal, too grounded to be a bird, too plump to be a butterfly... Finally we found the perpetrator. They're called Chinese ground quail, and they are just about the cutest little things I have ever, ever seen. I wanted to take one home. Full grown they can fit in your palm, and they were running wild under the bushes, popping out now and then.

After the humidity in the butterfly conservatory started to get to us (they keep it at 85 degrees with something like 90% humidity), we walked a couple of blocks to the farthest southern point of the US. There's a tacky little buoy set up for pictures, but for some reason they have put metal fencing around it so you can't actually pose right next to it. And then you get the lovely fencing in your pictures. Ah, aesthetics.

At that point we had pretty much tired ourselves out for the day, so we hopped back in the car for the drive back to Miami. It took us several hours, but at least we got to stop along the way at the Key Lime emporium, where everything has key lime in it! They even had key lime trees out front that we were seriously considering dragging on the plane home, but finally thought better of it.

Once we got back to our Miami hotel, we decided we wanted a little Cuban food for dinner. So, after a couple of free happy hour drinks, we asked the concierge if there was somewhere authentic nearby. He not only assured us that there was, he even offered to drop us off in the hotel shuttle van. We heartily agreed, so he dropped us off at a lovely place called La Rosa. You can see my blog about dinner here. And being the boring, lazy people we are, we went right back home after dinner to watch a little TV and get ready for bed.